I haven’t shaved my armpits in about three months. They’re
not just shadowed with stubble. They’re not even just fuzzy. They’re…hairy.
This wasn’t a conscious choice. It started out as sheer laziness. I take baths
instead of showers most of the time, and the razor is always on the shower
caddy hanging from the showerhead. Once I’m lying down in the bath and realize
my razor is so far away, I just think, “Oh well. Maybe I’ll shave tomorrow.” I
didn’t ever decide to grow out my armpit hair, but it’s interesting to me that
it gets such as reaction. Apparently I’m supposed to shave every inch of my
regularly visible body, or people will just tell me all about the fact that I’ve
got body hair going on. I’ve been informed that family members are going to “stage
an intervention,” and I was asked to explain why I had armpit hair. I guess I
didn’t realize I owed people explanations for my choices as to what I do with
my body as I go through my daily life.
I don’t ask other people to explain their body hair.
A lot of people have said that they shave not because
they are responding to societal pressure but because they find body hair “gross.”
Americans as a general rule will use this word to describe all things related
to the body; people declare feet to be gross, their own genitalia to be gross, body
hair to be gross, and everybody loves to say that penises are gross. I don’t
understand any of these things to be gross unless they’re diseased and oozing
pus. To believe that these things are inherently gross in and of themselves is
to believe that even clean, fresh from the bath feet are “gross.” It’s to
believe that my non-sticky, non-stinky armpit hair is “gross.” Some genitalia
may be moist, but that doesn’t make it gross. I find it odd that so many
people, and women in particular, describe a perfectly normal bodily function
(the growing of hair) to be gross, but what really gets me down is that
everyone feels the need to tell me this when they see my armpit hair.
As Madonna once famously put it, “I’m not your bitch. Don’t
hang your shit on me.” I’m absolutely certain that I’ve quoted that before, but
it’s one of my favorites.
I have been asked if this was “a feminist thing,” or
perhaps the result of depression. It’s armpit hair! I just didn’t see it as
that important. It’s just what’s happening right now, today, for me. Watching
people have such strong reactions to such a silly thing is both funny and
depressing. What I am doing harms exactly no one, but the group is passionately
opposed to me stepping outside of the norm. My armpit hair makes me “the other,”
that scary beast who needs taming. I suppose if I am willing to flout this
convention, I might be willing to blow things up, steal, kill people, or be
willing to step outside the other norms we so desperately need for civilized
society. Except that is a crazy line of thinking.
Historically speaking, we’ve most likely used this
instinct to spot “the other” to protect ourselves from the enemy. But we should
be becoming more discerning at this point. Instead, we still crudely separate
by “us” and “them” along even the most meaningless of lines. Of course, no one
has abandoned me over it just yet, but they’re simply at stage one: shaming me
into compliance. If I don’t respond to that, I wonder how long until I’m
banished to the forest.
My armpit hair doesn’t feel so much like a feminist issue
except insofar as it others me but does not other men. In reality, it didn’t
really feel like an issue at all until other people started talking to me about
it like it was a symbolic problem and a great offense. But if it is an issue,
it feels like part of a larger issue for me – the issue of “the other” and how
even the most banal of infringements on societal norms can immediately send you
to “the other” side.
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